A Literary Life

The Road (Cormac McCarthy)

I have heard of, but never read, McCarthy’s most famous book, All the Pretty Horses. Published in 1992, I suppose it was somewhat ahead of my reading abilities at the time (I was 12). But it was only after ten pages of The Road–The Boyfriend and I were sitting in the dentist office waiting room and I turned to him in happy surprise, my eyes shiny–that I knew I would not only devour this novel but attempt to get my hands on any other of the 10 novels he’d written, including Pretty Horses.

The Road begins in a post-apocalyptic America where soot and ash cover the world, blowing from place to place on the wind and falling down like rain, a world that is more vivid and believable because the author chooses not to tell us how it became so scarred. He removes the exposition and thereby allows the reader to suspend disbelief effortlessly, not dealing with niggling doubts about whether it could have “really” happened. Instead, we are all the sudden in that world, as stuck as the main characters of father and son in the bleak future, knowing that it does no good to ask why or how but only to soldier on.

For the father and son, this means trudging down the road in the direction of, well, hopefully something better. The father doesn’t know if it will be, the son only has vague ideas of what better even is, but both realize that without the motion of moving on, they will give up hope that “better” is possible. Yes, it is a dark vision. Take for instance the father’s thoughts on the purpose of continuing to struggle, the purpose of thought when it will never be known outside your own head:

No sound but the wind. What will you say? A living man spoke these lines? He sharpened a quill with his small pen knife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack? At some reasonable and entabled moment? He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt.

Yet despite this darkness, and because of it, you are pulled along with these men and their love and dependence on one another. In their quest to remain human and yet still remain alive. As they attempt to find out why alive is better than dead.

(Son:) Can I ask you something? he said.
Yes. Of course.
Are we going to die?
Sometime. Not now.
And we’re still going south.
Yes.
So we’ll be warm.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay what?
Nothing. Just okay.
Go to sleep.
Okay.
I’m going to blow out the lamp. Is that okay?
Yes. That’s okay.
And then later in the darkness: Can I ask you something?
Yes. Of course you can.
What would you do if I died?
If you died I would want to die too.
So you could be with me?
Yes. So I could be with you.
Okay.

I don’t want to ruin this sparse, powerful story or style with any more commentary. I want to keep its mystery with me and hope that many more readers will, like me, find a memorable jewel of words and ideas in this novel. Polish it up. Put it on a mental shelf.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hardcover.

Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace)

It took me six weeks to finish this book, which I believe is a personal record. I’ve spent more than six weeks trying (and failing) to finish a book when I was younger, before I was wise enough to know when to throw in the towel, even if the books was supposed to be classic, change-your-life good or the favorite tome of someone I admire. (See here or here for examples). But unlike those paper weights of unfinished (sometimes undecipherable) prose, I loved this six-week long adventure, every one of its 981 pages. That’s 1,079 with the footnotes. Yes, it’s fiction and yet it has footnotes, but we will get to that later.

This is a story about an America of the very near future, where the U.S. has basically annexed Mexico and Canada to form the Organization of North American Nations. They cede “The Concavity,” which is basically America’s toxic waste dump, to Canada, elect a Vegas-crooner ala Tom Jones to the presidency and do away with the numbering of years (i.e. 1999, 2000, 2001) in order to make a buck through sponsorship. Enter the Year of the:Whopper, Tucks Medicated Pad, Trial-Size Dove Bar, Perdue Wonderchicken, Whisper-Quiet Maytag Dishwasher, etc. Welcome to the world of modern individualism, technological isolation, educated non-communication, bumbling social/political policy, post-post modern art, Canadian terrorism, and meanlessness existences full of humor and irony, if not true emotion.

This is the story (mostly) of the Incandenza family. A professional grammarian mother and a optics expert/tennis enthusiast/film director/alcoholic father who commited suicide via microwave, who have three boys — a womanizing NFL punter, a disabled budding filmmaker and Hal, our (mostly) main character, who is a nationally ranked student at the tennis academy his father founded and a bit of a pot head. Hal, who …

“… himself hasn’t has a bona fide intesity-of-interior-life type emotion since he was tiny; he finds terms like joie and value to be like so many variables in rarified equations, and he can manipulate them enough to satisfy everyone but himself that he is in there, inside his own hull, as a human being.”

The other cast of characters is filled out by a range of addicts, alcoholics and junkies who at one time or another inhabit the halfway house down the hill for the tennis academy.

This is the story of searching for meaning and finding none, of creating your own, of cracking jokes that are too serious to be funny and suffering tragic circumstances without getting the larger joke. It’s about depression and the substances or people we use to plug the gaps in ourselves. It’s about our burning hunger for entertainment, any entertainment to escape the self, and of the ultimate entertainment–an elusive film that is so perfect, it could infest humanity like a plague, bringing mankind to his knees faster and more effectively than any bio-terrorist WMD every conceived

“We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe. God or Satan, politics or grammar, topology or philately — the object seemed incidental to this will to give oneself away, utterly. To games or needles, to some other person. Something pathetic about it. A flight-from in the form of a plunging-into. Flight from exactly what?”

But mostly, this book is pure David Foster Wallace. Dense and intelligent without taking the world too seriously. Incredibly funny without being vapid. Very long sentences trailing into the distance, moving at the speed and with the course of thought, punctuated with volumious footnotes that bounce you in and out of the narrative, in and out of time, in and out of character’s minds, out of your mind in general. He oscillates between erudite words rarely found outside of dictionaries (my favorite repeated examples being prandial and fugue) and amusing, made-up constructions, tweaked pre- and suffixes, or misused nouns (like “polyesterishly”).

No, the novel is not for everyone. What 1,000-page novel is? But I enjoyed it immensley, envied Foster’s brilliance, and know that it will stick in my mental craw for quite some time, interupting routine thought patterns like a wrench in the works, forcing me to think in different circles, giggle at interior jokes no one else (who hasn’t invested the 1,000 pages) will get, and be a slightly different, more complex person with a new point of view on the world at large. Now that is the true hallmark of good fiction.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hardcover

The Gallery of Regrettable Food (James Lileks)

Once upon a time, James Lilecks moved to Fargo, North Dakota. Upon that time, his mother was greeted by the neighborhood “Welcome Wagon” with, among other things, a cookbook sponsored by the North Dakota Durum Wheat Commision called Specialties of the House. She glanced at it, shuddered and promptly shoved it into some lightless corner. Once upon more current times, Lileks, now a writer at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, stumbled upon said book, became sick to his stomach at the sight of the “specialties it contained,” and began a personal collection of regrettable vintage cookbooks. Eventually, he created a whole new world–including Lileks.com and this fabulous little book I got for Christmas.

No, you don’t need a passport to travel in this world. You just need a snarky sense of humor, a haughty (but light-hearted) contempt for advertising culture, a love of all things campy or retro (the colors turquoise and olive green, boomerangs as a decorative shapes, etc.) and, most importantly, a strong stomach. The food in this world, I admit, is rather bad. Do you know what an aspic is? Ha! You do now!

Something about those poor vegetables suspended in transparent gelatin, space explorers frozen in zero grav, is so very space age. Well, what was once considered space age. Learn new vocabulary words and much more with Lileks as your witty host. Find out what dish he calls, “pressed shank braised with smoker’s phlegm” or “Ring O’ Rectum Flan.” Dicover the power of ketchup and 7Up, the A1 guide to better sex, why smart people eat toast, and how to entertain guests at the late hour of–GASP!–10:00 p.m. Make fun! Make fun and have fun until your heart’s content or the book is finished–which happens way too soon. (Luckily there are loads more hours entertainment on www.Lileks.com.)
Says Lileks:

“We seem to think we’re the first people to roll our eyes at the commercial culture; we’re not. Even then, no one believed something just because the corporate cookbook said so. But these books don’t presume our disbelief–and that’s what makes them seem so honest and simple. The quality of the lie is purer; the nature of the fib is cheerful and straightforward. Did my mom believe any of these things would make her life perfect? Of course not. I think she kept these books for another reason. Some people smoked, some took pills, some ran to keep off the weight. Mom just looked at the pictures. The recipes kept her slim and lovely for one reason: she never made them.”

Perhaps it’s just bad photography. Maybe it is the attempts of industry to seep into the kitchens and recipe boxes of a new generation of post-War housefraus. Perhaps the use of new, modern food products and techniques was more important than the human palate. Who knows? But whatever the cause of all this disaster, I’m sure glad I am looking at a book rather than a steaming hot plate of some of this glop my mother or other innocent female (always female, you know) household chef tried to force down my gullet. Ummmm, I’m not really hungry. I had a big lunch, you see. And I sure am thankful for my darling Jen who gifted me this little gem of fun and fabulousness, inscribing it as follows:

You have so many pretty, tasty, dignified, and sane cooking mags and tomes, I think it’s time you had something like this. Regrettable? Yes. Awesomely hilarious? Also yes. Maybe someday you’ll invite me over for a heapin helpin of “Harlequin Spinach” or some kind of horrible aspic. Until then, enjoy!

Oh, I have. As for the aspic, well, do they still sell clear gelatin to send modern veggie slices into null grav? I shall have to scour the local grocer and you will be the first one to get an invitation when I do.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hardcover

John’s Wife (Robert Coover)

Robert Coover is one of the most amazing, incredibly influential writers you’ve probably never heard of. I know I was only introduced to him in college during one of those American Fiction survey courses with a textbook four inches thick covering the classic, modern short stories: Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” or “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Caleveras County” by Mark Twain. Coover’s classic is “The Babysitter,” a story that in retrospect I didn’t understand all that well. The tale shifts perspective constantly and explores all the threads of the possible, changing the plot in front of your eyes. As a student, I found the story ominous and portentous, as if there was a mystery there I needed to figure out, a mystery that was going to end worse than I could ever imagine. I re-read the story later in his book “Pricksongs and Descants” (and reviewed it here) and now understand that, sure, it was ominous but it was also sheer play, a man who is throwing around words like marbles on pavement, seeing which ones fall in to the realm of the possible and in awe of how they glint and prism in the sunlight. Robert Coover is also a professor at Brown, the school I would earn my MFA from if pure desire were the only qualification for admission. Sigh. No really, I’m not bitter. Just mildly bruised.

With all this glowing praise thus far, you will understand that I really looked forward to reading more of his work and decided recently upon his 1998 novel, “John’s Wife.” Why? It was on the shelf at the library. May not be the best reason but I gotta tell you I am thankful it was there because I was flabbergasted and amazed by this book. From the cover of the book to the last word (which is “Once,” not that that spoils anything), I was hooked. Again, Coover is his fabulist meta self, shifting narrator from paragraph to paragraph throughout a cast of characters who inhabit a nameless Midwestern (I think) town.

Forty one characters to be exact–I just counted. This movement between the 41 causes the plot to shift back and forth in time as well as reveal the past and future in tempting bits and pieces, crumbs of the pie so to speak. At times, the narration passes from person to person like the flu, moving with a touch or an interaction to the next person in contact. Other times, it revolves around a theme. For example, let’s see what everyone in town is dreaming tonight or let’s chronicle how everyone lost their virginity–when, with whom, with each other? Only one person’s name may be in the title (John) and the subject of that title (John’s wife) is never identified as anything else. That’s because despite the title, this is the story of an entire town. The stories of entire lives, successes, mistakes, humanity. The story of how different, similar and connected all of those individual lives are, to the point that maybe they aren’t individual at all. Maybe our own voices are not distinct in the crowd, and we thinkwe can hear ourselves only to stave off madness.

Of course, let me quote the author’s own words, told in the voice of the philosophical town librarian to her pharmacist husband after watching a monster movie:

“We like to think, even when we’re being reasonable, that there are fixed boundaries—to our bodies, our essential being, our homes and families, our towns and nations—it’s how we know or think we know we have a self. But maybe it’s all a mad delusion, maybe there are no boundaries and no selves either, our conscious life just a way of hiding the real truth from us because, simply, it’s too much to live with. We have to stuff it back down in the pit where the creepies live, if we want to function at all, even if functioning, as we call it, is possibly the craziest thing we do. Art, even bad art like Hollywood horror movies, puts us in touch with that truth by breaking down the boundaries for a moment, producing monsters we secretly know to be more real than the good citizens that eventually subdue them.”

I say I was hooked. Now, I don’t want to mislead you with that phrase. It did take me a bit over two weeks to finish “John’s Wife” and that is a really long time in Kate world. Therefore let me warn you that this brilliant, witty narration can also be thick and confusing. The first hundred pages, I had to keep referring back to see who was who in an effort to keep the names straight. And the in-your-head streaming of thoughts made me often pause to catch my breath so I read in short–but satisfying–bursts. The concept, which I am amazed Coover was able to sustain so well for so long, sometimes makes the reader think that they are losing track of the plot, a confusing sensation that makes you doubt your own abilities of comprehension.

But of course, the characters are thrown into that world of doubt, too, of doubting their eyes, their hearts, their own existence. In the beginning, the characters may have reminded me of my grandmother and her sisters and friends, who grew up in a small town in days she paints with the “good ‘ole” brush. But then we see sin, temptation, greed, orgies, homosexuality of both sexes (which no longer remind me of my grandmother, naturally). We see reformed sinners as well as the religious kind in disguise. Oh and it gets better. After that comes the supernatural. Ghosts, metaphysical experiences, medical abnormalities, alternate realities. Fire, giants, gods, art.

I think the reader is supposed to experience that sensation of disorientation. Lose the train of thought that is. Get lost in the coal smoke and see that the scenery rolling by is becoming more surrealistic. Like you are on the track to hell but everyone sees, no one denies it and the rest of humanity does not implode, vanish or in any other way prove that it is not really happening. So it is really happening. Your disbelief is suspended into the atmophere, or even over the rainbow into Oz.
Let me again quote the author in the words of the town newspaperman/hopeful author, who missed an issue of the paper due to a personal meltdown:

He had not, for the first time since he undertook the task, kept the record [published the newspaper], he knew that, but the record he had kept all these years, or thought he’d kept, was now, he found, dissolving on him, as though to teach him what he had always known—that words were not, as he liked to pretend, the stubborn monitors of time, adamant and fixed as number, but were time’s recombinatory toys and about as hard as water—and so to taunt him with the futility of his record-keeping mission… Art emerges, not from the seen, but from the longing for what is not seen.

Yet the reader keeps reading those futile words… and with gusto. Not because the words are facts, permanent and set. But because they are shifting, confusing, false and therefore totally human in a way that truth could never be.

Right? Have I lost ya? Well, can’t say that I blame you if I have. After all, it took me more than two weeks to digest it all and it is well worth the meal. I didn’t read a story. I read all the stories. Every story. I didn’t learn anything or have any revelations. Instead, I learned about the revelations behind the falsity of facts.

I was like Otis, the police cheif, whose…

… desire [was] now was to recapture that visionary moment just before, wherein, as he now recalled, his whole life as Officer Otis the guardian warrior had been revealed as a mockery, a self-delusion: what did his lifelong obsession with order and disorder have to do with this turbulent, radiant, and tender world which knew, at heart, no such distinction? … Yes, he had been ready at last to shed all artifice—to be a man merely of the here and now was to be a man closed out from eternity!—and to embrace, if it could be said to be embracable, the legendary abyss, which seemed to lie just beyond the war undulant flesh.

Two weeks. Yes, two weeks on one book is a long time for me, like watching a nine-hour marathon of Law and Order or The Sopranos (or some other deep show you like, doesn’t matter). You don’t regret it. In fact, you loved it. But it’s time to change the channel now, maybe towards some Gilligan’s Island or a nice game show. I think for my next book I will try out something fluffier, something that tells a nice story that moves from point A to point B and ends at point C. Not that such a linear plot means life, literature or art is so linear or logical or valid. But like the librarian character points out, we all need our little delusions and distractions.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hardcover

The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay (Michael Chabon)

Winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize, this book by Michael Chabon is a sprawling story of two cousins, World War II, Judaism, the comic book industry, sexuality, masculinity and love. While the Pulitzer is always a reason to put a novel on my reading list, the fact that Chabon wrote Wonder Boys (a movie I adore though I admit *blush* I’ve never read the book) was an added inducement. With all of that in mind, this 650-page monster had a lot to live up to in my mind.

All-in-all, live up it did. It was a good book, one that sucked me in and kept my interest with round characters and plot twists. My eyes raced the words to see who would find out what happened first. It was the kind of book that makes me wish my lunch break were longer and makes my bath water grow cold around me, the bubbles popped and the water turning gray with soap. Yes, it was good….

And also very, how-you-say… boy. Honestly, that realization shouldn’t be all that surprising when you consider that the tale is woven around the concept of the comic book. The main characters write and draw the books; debate the characters and their greater societal value; discuss the unconscious lure of the tales for American youth with their violence and clear-cut morality; and, most importantly, adopt on the aspects of the their creations in their real lives. This is very interesting and compelling in portions, especially when Chabon links artistic endeavors to action: art as a weapon in a situation when you are otherwise powerless, the ability of art to change opinions perhaps even more than action itself. I also love how the disguise of art is exposed: that artistic creation is often the mask an artist wears, revealing more of the true self on the page than in reality.

But, much like a comic book, this approach does have limitations as well. For one, the foreshadowing, which is far from subtle and feels more like a cartoon, Acme anvil falling from the sky. KA-BLAM. I instantly knew who was going to fall in love with who, who was lying, what choices and actions would be pivotal later in the story, who was going to die, etc. It says a lot that I cared for these characters enough that my heart reacted to these anvils–No! Don’t say that, I would think. No! I like you too much for you to die. But most audiences don’t like being treated like 8-year-old comic-loving boys–we don’t like to be hit over the head with something as if we were stupid. We like to be surprised and, if the ending is going to be a happy one, I would prefer not to know that halfway through the book, reading the other half only to find out the specifics of that happiness and the route they were going to take to get there.

Very boyish. Predictable, in a way. I think Chabon does this consciously, mimicking the heightened sense of destiny, fate and morality that are the foundation of the comic universe. But it was very conscious to me as a reader as well, making me feel pandered to in some way. Plot points come around too easily, deserved success arrives, love will be thwarted at the most crusial moment, heroic actions spring from noble hearts, just desserts are served. Come and get ‘em!. By creating a comic book universe–one of such reverence, almost worship, for the art form, its creators and the golden age of its inception–Chabon made a story that couldn’t exist in real life, that was fake and over-blown at its core.

Wow. That sounds like a really bad review when, in fact, I did enjoy this book immensely. I enjoyed it as a rollicking romp through a world of a boy’s imagination, where obstacles crop up like icebergs but there is never any doubt about reaching port in safety. No doubts about the basic goodness of mankind, the love of friends and family, and, of course, the triumph of good over evil.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars = Buy the hardcover

Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell)

Let me start by saying that I loved this book. Let me end by saying I don’t know if I fully understand this book. Now that I have sandwiched both ends of my thoughts about Cloud Atlas, I suppose I need to add the peanut butter and jelly.

Similar to my PB&J filling, David Mitchell crafts a story that is both rich and substantial as well as light but sticky. It is the second book I have read of late (the other being Specimen Days) that has experimented with segmenting a story over the lives of several unrelated people in distant time periods. We begin in the journal of an estate agent in 1850 traveling through the South Pacific back to his gold-rushing home of San Francisco. Then, jump to the letters of an open-minded (read: bisexual) young composer in the 1930s–> a cub reporter in the 1970s who stumbles upon a nuclear power conspiracy that endangers her life–> a mediocre, modern English publisher imprisoned in with age–> an interview with a human simulant from the Korea of the future–> and then finally travels to a primitive Hawaiian culture that struggles to retain civilization after “the fall.” Each story jolts into one another, sometimes even in mid-page, often in the exact moment where you decide as a reader that you like this character more than the last.

Now here comes the great part. After the Hawaiian adventure, we travel the same road in reverse. Back through time to our American agent on a sea voyage. There! See? There! There is the exact moment where it is no longer possible to put down this unique and convoluted (yet becoming more and more unified) book. Clear the calendar and cancel all appointments. You are in for the long haul.

There’s the peanut butter, Ladies and Gentlemen. And here’s the jelly, aye, here’s the rub. Again, I loved it. Mitchell paints every character with humanity and depth. He interweaves the tales without being heavy-handed, leaving bread crumbs and hints in tiny details. (Except the comet–you’ll see–which was a bit too obvious) At the end, I could see Mitchell’s message about human nature: the stronger preying on weaker, our hunger for power building and then tearing down our families/cultures/environment, about other sorts of hunger–for goods, wealth, fame, love, freedom–and slavery, both forced and voluntary.

In short, it made me think. A lot of thoughts. A lot of thoughts I can’t quite synthesize as yet but can’t get rid of, like a child’s sticky fingers after lunch. I see that the book is a sort of Hegel-ian model of dialectic history–forgive me, I was a History major as well as English. Hegel thought that each idea/movement/governmental system/thesis brought into existence its opposite or antithesis. These combined will disappear. Like a + and a -, they become a 0, negate each other, mean nothing, annihilate both. Therefore, they will come into conflict and something else–a fusion of sorts, not necessarily an even one–will emerge.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of my sticky fingers, sticky thoughts. Excellent thoughts as well. An excellent novel is one that will stick to your ribs (okay, okay, no more food analogies). Though I highly recommend this book, I will also recommend that you read it with a friend or in a book club. From my own experience, you will want someone to speak to about this. I feel I have a lot of ideas I need to test on another reader’s ears or that I may have missed some important piece they picked up.

Here we go. Here’s a solution—> Read it. Love it. Write me. Help me.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars = Buy the Hardcover

Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides)

Incest, sex, gender, love, sexuality, abnormality, belonging, sex…. Oh, I said sex already? Sorry.

The novel by Jeffrey Eugenides (author of the Virgin Suicides) is the enthralling epic of a Greek family come to America and the tracing of their genetic blunders down to the third generation when–oops–a little something strange appeared. We are all a product of the past, a concoction of the events and characteristics of the people who came before. The narrator of this book just gets to consciously tag along, watching over grandparents’ shoulders like a disembodied, time-travelling fairy. From the old world to the new, from World War I to the 1970s, this narrator reveals rich, compelling characters that you love despite their faults, that your heart pangs for when you realize (before they do) what is truly going on.

Sit down, hold on, clear your schedule and make way for Middlesex: a book that won the Pulitzer Prize for damn good reason by an author who has never failed to disappoint me. Eugenides takes the family epic, a plotline usually reserved for light historical fiction or sweeping romances, and elevates it to the highest level of literary fiction. Jeffrey, if you are out there somewhere, will you adopt me/teach me/trade places with me? I promise to call you a genius everyday, bring coffee into your office and feed paper sheet by sheet into the back of your typewriter if you promise to pound out another book to entertain, fascinate and move me.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars = Buy the harcover

Tortilla Flat (John Steinbeck)

This is the second Steinbeck novel I have found for sale in the libraries remnant bin—the second-hand shelf where they get rid of books that they don’t want to keep on their shelves any more for various reasons. While I am happy to get a copy of this book (I have read it before but do not own it), I am also sad. What is the state of our library system that they toss out Steinbeck with the morning’s refuse? Where is the love I ask you? I comfort myself with the thought that new editions are simply becoming available and the libraries are restocking their shelves with better, brighter copies with which to educate the future generation of readers. I hope.

Steinbeck. Two syllables of greatness. Sometimes I have a hard time pinning down just what it is that makes Steinbeck so fun to read. It’s not as if he reinvents the wheel or as if poetry, a river deep and swirling, drips from his pen like a, like a… okay, I’m no poet either. Steinbeck is simply an excellent story-teller (look here, for instance) and Tortilla Flat is no exception.

The short, speedy novel is the tale of a group of friends recently returned from WWI, paisanos (of mixed Indian, Spanish and European blood) who love their wine and women. These characters are unique and human, humorous, bumbling, touching. Their world is so simple and easy in a way. Having property may be a great status symbol but is not worth it because of the headache. Disgrace and sin are not characterized by adultery or theft. Instead, honor lies in sharing a jug of wine or a cut of pork with a friend. Oh, did I mention the wine?

“Two gallons is a great deal of wine, even for two paisanos. Spiritually the jugs may be graduated thus: Just below the shoulder of the first bottle, serious and concentrated conversation. To inches farther down, sweetly sad memory. Three inches more, thoughts of old and satisfactory loves. An inch, thoughts of bitter loves. Bottom of the first jug, general and undirected sadness. Shoulder of the second jug, black, unholy despondency. Two fingers down, a song of death or longing. A thumb, every other song each one knows. The graduations stop here, for the trail splits and there is no certainty. From this point on anything can happen.”

Oh please. Take me to a time and place (and to a people) that prizes sitting in the sun barefoot in the morning, working only sporadically (usually to buy wine or throw a party), stealing in a Robin Hood context, pulling the wool over outsiders’ eyes. A society where a man who sleeps under the stars, had no bed to call his own and steals chickens from his neighbors can still be a “good” man. And if not “good,” at least endearing, entertaining and memorable.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars = Buy the hard cover

Willful Creatures (Aimee Bender)

Aimee Bender’s work is excellent, unique and very hard to categorize. I suppose I would think of her stories as I do my own dreams–random, wacky and horrific while simultaneous humorous–which I then wake up from to see how symbolic and telling those sleeping visions really are. They are simple yet sharp, leaving me wondering why no one (meaning me) could have pinned down that idea before or how someone (meaning me) could take inspiration from the story to create another something just as meaningful.

I simply love this woman’s writing with the same passion as I did when first introduced to it through The Girl in the Flammable Skirt. Though I love and idolize it, I think it may be impossible to ever recreate. If anything, the inspiration a writer can glean from Bender is to treat all their ideas with the utmost seriousness, to never leave a small inspiriation by the wayside. Want to write a story about a woman with potatoes for children? Do it, it could be poignant and touching. Want to tell the story of a husband and wife who kill each other solely for their preference in food spice? Go for it, that tale could symbolize the contradictory nature of love, as in opposites attract and also drive each other bonkers.

In order to give you an idea of what this Incredible Ms. Bender is all about, let me quote you the first paragraph of the collection of stories, from a tale called Death Watch:

“Ten men go to ten doctors. All the doctors tell all the men that they only have two weeks left to live. Five men cry. Three men rage. One man smiles. The last man is silent, meditative. Okay, he says. He has no reaction. The raging men, upon meeting in the lobby, don’t know what to do with the man of no reaction. They fall upon him and kill him with their bare hands. The doctor comes out of his office and apologizes, to the dead man.

Dang it, he says sheepishly, to his collegues. Looks like I got the day wrong again.

One can’t account for murder or accidents, says another doctor in his bright white coat.”

I looked at this book the same way I would a tasty dessert–a cheesecake, a box of sorbet or anything chocolate. The moment I had opened it, I wanted to devour it completely and yet I forced myself to pace it, unwilling to let the experience end too quickly. The moment I closed the cover, I mourned that there are not more Aimee Bender books I could lay my hands on ASAP. In the end, I am thankful for the sweet experience and also that books aren’t high in calories or fat. It’s just that the truly delicious ones often appear to be few and far between.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars = Buy the hard cover

Pricksongs and Descants (Robert Coover)

Robert Coover is a significant figure in the history of writing as the father of metafiction. Everyone who studies modern American literature will–or should–have studied his work, especially his quintessential story, The Babysitter, which is included in this anthology. How to explain Coover… hmmm.

Well, there are second-person narrated game show scenes where the object of the game is to avoid death. There is a magician who pulls more than rabbits out of his hat and, tragically, fails to pull out a sexy, protruding ass from the black brim. There is a magic poker, a little red riding hood remake and much much more. Be prepared for anything and for short paragraphs with alternating points of view, realities and voices. Confusion is the beauty, don’t you see? No? Well, you will when you get the hang of it.

Read, live, love. Coover–my hero–was essential in the development of the curriculum at Brown, where I would attend school if sheer will were the only necessary component.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars = Buy the hard cover